Jay Taft: Bid farewell to members of worst Chicago Bears defense

They finished the season - yes fans, after Sunday's 33-28 loss to Green Bay, it IS over - as the worst defense in Bears' team history.

And boy did it show in what turned into a disappointing elimination game at Soldier Field.

The offense, as was the case most of the year, did its part and did enough to win the game. It was the defense that cost the Bears on Sunday, and it was the defense that was the main reason Chicago is going to miss the playoffs for the sixth time in the past seven seasons.

"What can we say. There are no excuses. We were bad again," defensive tackle Stephen Paea admitted after the Packers racked up 473 total yards, went 12-for-21 on third and fourth downs, and drove right down the Bears' throats to score the game-winner with 38 seconds left in the game.

"If you can't play better than that, if you can't execute better than that, hey, this is the NFL, and there will be changes. We'll just have to deal with it."

And they will have to deal with a lot of them.

The Bears allowed more touchdowns (56), more offensive yards (6,313) and more rushing yards (2,583) this year than in any other season since they started playing football in 1920.

And, after coughing up a 28-20 fourth-quarter lead to a Packers' offense led by a rusty Aaron Rodgers, they will have to live with the fact that they were a part of the worst defense to ever wear a Bears' uniform.

"This one's going to hurt for a while. This whole season is going to hurt for a while," said cornerback Tim Jennings, one of the many defensive players no longer under contract with the Bears. "We're going to have to bite the bullet, figure out how to fix it and make changes."

The Bears head into the offseason with a long list of potential unrestricted free agents. Aside from quarterback Jay Cutler on the offensive side and Devin Hester from the special teams, general manager Phil Emery and his staff will have to make a lot of decisions on the defensive side of the ball.

Contracts that expired Sunday on the defense: Jennings, Henry Melton, Charles Tillman, Major Wright and Corey Wootton. Jennings and Wootton will most likely be back; the rest probably will not.

And there are plenty of reasons why:

- Opponents were 12-for-16 on fourth-down conversions against the Bears this season, and Green Bay pulled off three of them Sunday, including two on the game-winning drive, and one on the game-winning touchdown pass with 38 seconds remaining.

The Bears mustered the fewest sacks in the league (31), and generated little to no pass rush in 13 of the team's 16 games this year.

- Missed tackles were an issue early in the year, but things got worse as the season went along. Sure, injuries to Melton, Tillman, Lance Briggs and others set the defense back at times, but even the veterans were posterized by missed tackles. Sixth-year defensive back Craig Steltz was made to look silly when he whiffed on running back Eddie Lacy, one of five badly missed tackles for Chicago in the season finale.

- Lance Briggs, who missed almost half the season with a shoulder injury, was fourth on the team in tackles (71), and he had just four solos and three assisted tackles in the past two games since his return. That's your defensive leader.

But the most glaring deficiency found on the Bears' defense this year came via the eye test.

Just watching the Steelers rack up 453 yards in a Week 3 Bears' victory; watching Reggie Bush imitate Barry Sanders while gaining 139 yards on 18 carries in a Week 4; seeing Saints tight end Jimmy Graham catch 10 passes for 135 yards, and then gazing at Brandon Jacobs go over 100 yards in his first game back with the Giants at midseason; the Redskins put up 499 yards on the Bears in Week 7; no-name back Bennie Cunningham chalked up his best game as a pro with 109 yards in a Rams' blowout win; and Philly's mauling last weekend, in which they gave up 54 points, just one off the all-time record set in 1997.

The proof is in the numbers, and right in front of our eyes. This defense got old, it got slow, and it got bad. The only reason the Bears were still in the hunt - all the way down to the last second of the last game - is because Marc Trestman's offense kicked in and picked up the slack.

My how things have changed in Chicago. And over the next few weeks, they will change a whole lot more as this defense gets a facelift, and, hopefully for Bears fans, a full recharge back to the way the Bears are known for playing defense.

"It's a fair question, and at some point soon we're going to have to talk about that," Trestman responded when asked about changes to the defense. "For now, we're just dealing with this tough loss."